August 22, 2006

"Sometimes being a fan is a pleasure...other times, it's a duty."*

To me, baseball is a kind of literature. Perhaps just because of my own affinity for story, this beautiful game is, in my eyes, an endless serial narrative with a richly drawn set of ever-evolving, ever-shifting characters. Sometimes I jokingly refer to the Red Sox as my favorite soap opera. In its addictiveness and neverending intrigue, it certainly is.

Meanwhile, the facts on the field--the pitches, the hits, the fielding plays, the runs scored, the games won or lost, the statistics and trivia available after the fact--add up to a text, and the beauty of it is that, as with any literature taken seriously, this text is both accessible and open to interpretation.

But, I'm beginning to realize, there's a key difference between literature as studied in English courses and read in libraries and the kind of literature that baseball is: in this story, the observer is also a character. Not just as the reader who necessarily bends the text into his or her particular perspective, but as involved spectators who can, in small ways, change the story itself as it happens.

In the particular story that is the Boston Red Sox, unfortunately, I'm beginning to come to the conclusion that the observers often do more damage than good.

The observers in this case who deserve the most criticism, in my opinion, are the sportswriters charged with covering the news out of the team's clubhouse. I had begun to form this point of view long before this season, when I stopped listening to WEEI (which before had been the equivalent of a pack-a-day habit) and gradually stopped reading the major mainstream sports commentary. Eventually, I even stopped watching the sports debate and most of the clip shows on television, choosing instead to adopt a kind of baseball asceticism: nothing but the game. For commentary, I looked to the writings of my fellow fans on the internet, and there, too, I have been selective.

But my concern about the role of the observers in the baseball story has only grown this year, and fuel to the fire has been Feeding the Monster by Seth Mnookin.

I understand that there have been many criticisms of this important book, and many of them have been solidly argued. But no single event has changed the way I see the Red Sox, and my fandom, as profoundly as reading this book this season.

The one criticism I want to address before continuing is the feeling among some Red Sox fans that Mnookin, in both his book and his blog, is condescending toward fans. I realize that for Mnookin, and now for me, as I open this can of worms, the risk of seeming to look down on other fans is a very real one. To that I can just say that I don't count myself lily-white in this, either. I'm working hard, myself, just like everyone else, to decide the appropriate reaction to a text that, this season, has been extremely complicated and murky. If the conclusions I'm coming to in an attempt to sort this all out seem like I'm making a judgment about how you choose to be a fan, I want to make clear that nothing could be further from my true motivations--which is why I've waited and thought about this for so long before sitting down to write this particular post.

Anyway, if the book changed my opinion more than any other single Red-Sox-related entity, written or otherwise, the single turning-point passage was the story about Byung-Hyun Kim.

In a chapter entitled "Gump: A Cautionary Tale", Mnookin goes into excruciating detail about Grady Little's mismanagement of Kim (as well as detail about the Diamondbacks' mismanagement of Kim, which set him up for the "psychologically damaged" reputation he was to acquire):

In the final half of the [2003] season, Little used Kim a total of 42 times; extrapolated out over an entire season, that would be 84 appearances. In 14 out of the last 18 years, no American League reliever has appeared in 84 or more games. Nine of Kim's 42 appearances were for more than one inning, and five were for two or more. In 2005, when the Red Sox's Mike Timlin led the league with 81 appearances, only 14 of his stints were for more than an inning, and only four were for two. From July 6 through the end of the season, Kim pitched in six out of seven games three times. From August 26 to September 3, he pitched in seven out of eight games, including one appearance of two innings.

Not only does it show the workload Kim was under, but it also shows just how much credit he deserves for having stabilized the bullpen that summer.

But then, of course, enter Game 1 of the 2003 ALDS. I warn Sox fans that the following is painful to read:

With one out [in the ninth inning], Kim walked Billy McMillon and hit Chris Singleton with a pitch, putting runners on first and second. He then struck out Mark Ellis, leaving the Sox one out away from a win. The next batter was the A's left-handed designated hitter, Erubiel Durazo.

Before Durazo could dig in to the batter's box, Grady Little bounded out of the Sox dugout and headed for the mound. He held out his left arm and pointed toward the bullpen: He wanted lefty Alan Embree to come face Durazo. It was, casual fans everywhere knew, a high percentage move. Left-handed batters generally have a much more difficult time facing left-handed pitchers, and Kim fared much better against right-handers.

Except Erubiel Durazo was not your typical left-handed batter. He actually had what's referred to as a reverse split. He hit better--much better, in fact--against lefties than he did against righties. In 2003, Durazo's batting average was 36 points higher when facing lefties, and his slugging percentage was 39 points higher. What's more, in 2003, Embree exhibited a reverse split, too, with lefties hitting 42 points better than righties against him. Finally, Little had just shown up his closer by telling Kim he didn't have confidence in him to record the game's final out.

In lieu of this, however, the following was even more painful for me to read:

The inning hadn't even ended before Kim was, once again, labeled the goat...It was, as no one hesitated to point out, the third time Kim had blown a postseason game in which his team had had the lead heading into the ninth inning...[when it came time for the ALCS] Byung-Hyun Kim was left off the team entirely.

It's true. No one in this town hesitated for a second to heckle and pile invective on the head of BK, who was probably the player most singlehandedly responsible for the Sox's berth in the postseason. I include myself in this. Until I read this account of what happened in Game 1, I had nothing to challenge my impression that Kim was simply a useless head case, a sidearming novelty pitcher with a strange personality and of forgettable import to the team. As I recall, Theo Epstein has also been most roundly criticized so far for signing Kim to a long-term deal the next year (although the Matt Clement signing is earning him more criticism of late).

But when I read this, I realized that if I had been a more informed fan, I might have realized the full story behind Kim in the ALDS. I might have refrained from joining the piling on that culminated in his booing at Fenway Park (the famous Flip of the Bird incident). When I read this, I realized I just didn't want to "be that guy".

I also realized more than ever before the extent of the beat writers' betrayal of their audience's trust in them to adhere to even the barest standards of journalistic decency in reporting on the team that is the center of attention in our local culture. They have abused their power to an appalling degree, especially given the intensity of this culture, enormous power to manipulate the reactions of the fan base, and therefore make the lives of the players that much more miserable (see also: Renteria, Edgar).

Nowhere else have I seen laid out so starkly just how ridiculously inflammatory and pathalogically negative our beat writers can be. Take Dan Shaughnessy (an easy example, admittedly) following the sale of the Red Sox:

Bud Selig, according to Shaughnessy, wanted a Red Sox team with an anemic payroll and little chance of being competitive. 'Selig can be forgiven,' Shaughnessy wrote sarcastically. 'It's OK with him if we become the Kansas City Royals of the East'."

These examples (there are many, many others in the book, a book I think every fan should read this season, if only to hold up their end of the continued conversation around it) highlighted for me in unsparing detail the truly poisonous nature of the Boston pen, and have made more recent examples of what Mnookin terms "calcified misunderstandings" hit home that much harder. Take, for example, this obscenity from Shaughnessy from this past Sunday's Globe. I don't have the stomach to excerpt it, but suffice to say Shaughnessy lays the blame for this season's failings squarely at the feet of Theo--and does so with glee. Lest we forget, Shaughnessy was a key player in Theogate over this past offseason--and so the poison sinks deeper. The misunderstanding grows into itself.

Another example of this from very recent times is an article from Sean McAdam--who, of all the talking heads in Boston, is one I've often considered among the fairest--excoriating Manny, of all people, as a result of the latest series.

And it's not just the pros who have been pushing one agenda or another, for whatever reason, to stump for their particular candidate in the Who's to Blame Race of Aught Six. Fans have been jumping at the chance to lambaste one figure or another as the root cause of the debacle. Some have picked Francona. Some have picked Theo. Some have picked Josh Beckett. Either way, the compulsion in Red Sox Nation--as always--is to find a bad guy, and then burn him in effigy.

The problem, as the Kim example shows--and Bill Buckner before him--is that we have an unfortunate tendency to pick the wrong guy.

Oh well, has been the argument when I've raised this point. This is how Boston is, some guys aren't cut out to play here. See also, Renteria, Edgar.

And it's true, this town is not going to change its spots entirely. We're not going to become apathetic, we're not going to lose our intensity, or our intense desire to win. But I'm beginning to think there is a point at which it goes too far, and it's just not something I enjoy about being a fan. Sorry--I just don't want to be that guy.

The story of Kim is just one example, in my opinion, of how a knee-jerk fan and media reaction can truly make things worse.

But there are others. Think about it--why was Tim Wakefield so sure he was going to "become the next Buckner"? Why, only because Buckner himself, like Wakefield, would have been the MVP of the series in which he made his single memorable mistake. Why do you think Theo specifically begged us not to mistreat Wily Mo when he first got here? That, to me, makes a statement that our reactions can be a factor with certain players. It doesn't make a player put a bat on a ball more effectively--true--but if players are already struggling mentally, our blame and vocal reactions to them have made things worse in the past.

You don't think it's getting to them? How about the example of Mike Timlin coming to the defense of Julian Tavarez in the bullpen a few weeks ago as fans began (and not, I'm sure, for the first time) to heckle him?

Take, also, the guy who has been heckling Keith Foulke at the ballpark. Yeah, Foulke has been doing poorly and has not covered himself in glory in the media. Yeah, that fan has a right to be frustrated. but how is it productive for him to lay into Foulke? How does it help stop what Foulke's doing to piss him off? Foulke might not be the type of player to really let that affect him, but what, I ask at long last, is the ever-loving point of badgering him? It might not necessarily hurt, but it sure isn't going to help, either.

And, as I decided, I do not want to be that guy.

And the fact of the matter is, these things can change. You'll notice that, where Buckner was victimized, Wakefield, 17 years later, was spared. To go back even further, a town that once catcalled Jackie Robinson off the field now embraces this man as its hero.

"This is the way we are" or "this is the way it's always been" just aren't cutting it for me anymore. Why is it we could refrain from picking the easiest target--Wakefield--in the Game 7 debacle, but piled on BK Kim? Why can't we take that step further?

With these latest losing streaks, what I'm asking is, how is it productive for people to start calling for shakeups and trashing this guy or that guy because they want to blame someone?** Especially since the trade deadline has passed, there's not much on the waiver wire, and regardless of his long-term future with the team, firing the manager at this point wouldn't make a difference. Why is it so important to find someone to blame?

A consensus and righteous pick for Goat only comes around once in a great long while--Grady Little is the only example I can think of in which his blundering was absolute, undeniable and of epic proportions. Meanwhile, the misdirected frustration in that majority of remaining cases, including the example of the current season in all its complexity and paradox, tends to do more harm than good.

Look at Jonathan Papelbon's quotes after some of his recent losses--he said he was pressing, trying too hard, trying to "aim" the ball. The issue right now is psychological, in my opinion, and yes, the vast majority of it is self-inflicted. But how does it make anything better--or even different--to compound the psychological issues that may be a factor in our team's poor performance this season, and then run around wringing our hands over why this team isn't playing up to their full potential? Bemoaning the lack of chemistry and chutzpah and heart?

Take this latest Yankees series. In my opinion, when you lose by an average of 10 runs for three straight games, it's beyond being caused by managerial moves. It's also beyond being caused by the GM not making an eyewash trade at the deadline. Which is not to say that the manager / GM haven't been a factor--but this past weekend, it's safe to say that the players themselves are simply falling down on the job. And it's not just one or two of them--it's practically ALL of them, but especially the bullpen. You could make a case for Theo having put this team together, and therefore being to blame, but did ANYBODY think Beckett was going to stink up the joint this bad? Did ANYBODY think Tavarez would be quite so bad? Both he and Seanez were coming off decent seasons.

But that's not enough--now there are those who are second-guessing if the Sox should've resigned the veterans, like Pedro and Derek Lowe. Admittedly Derek is having a nice year, and Pedro has continued to show flashes of brilliance. But both are doing this in the National League. I personally think Pedro is pretty well washed up...and he's only going to get worse. As for Derek...well...let's just say I don't miss the D.Lowe Face, and if you don't think you would have been seeing it this weekend, you're kidding yourself.

Bronson Arroyo is what he is. It would be nice given the injuries to our starting rotation to have him in there, but unless you can show me that on the day of the trade you anticipated what would happen to our rotation, nobody's psychic. Wily Mo is getting better--and we will be glad to have him once Manny's contract is up and someone has to hit for power behind Big Papi.

Ultimately, the biggest difference here, to me, is the loss of Jason Varitek. That's the single factor you can point to that's different between when this team was playing decent baseball and their current pathetic state of affairs. With the way the bullpen has been absolutely falling all over itself, I think it's clear he was more of a factor, especially with the young pitchers, than we ever even dreamed he was.

So, if you want to figure out who's to blame for the cartilage in his knee blowing out, you know, go ahead.

Or you could just accept that through a combination of many, many factors, few of which are under anyone's control in any way whatsoever, this season has not turned out the way we wanted it to so far.

Enough, is what I'm saying, with the hindsight. Enough with the finger-pointing. Enough with the easy-target Manny bashing. Enough with the straight-faced suggestions that we replace Francona and Epstein with, say, Lou Piniella or J.P. Ricciardi, or that we should've replaced Jon Lester with Andruw Jones...for what, exactly?

Like I said. If you consider this kind of hysteria over a season that was never advertised as a no-doubt contending year part your identity as a fan, fine. Call me condescending. Call me apathetic. But I don't want to be that guy. That's the stand I'm taking. That's the line I'm drawing. That's the decision I'm making when it comes to what to do with myself in the wake of all this.

It's cheesy, but my mantra at this point in the season, as an observer aware of the power we have over the story, has been a combination of the Hippocratic Oath--First do no harm--in other words, don't be the heckler, the second-guesser, the hindsight-touter, the grass-is-always-greener doubter. Because these things may not actually hurt, but they do not help.

And also--apologies for more cheese, but this is an emotional thing we're talking about--how I feel about this season can be pretty well encapsulated by WH Auden, whose poem has been running through my head as I considered all this:

Looking up at the stars, I know quite wellThat, for all they care, I can go to hell,But on earth indifference is the leastWe have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burnWith a passion for us we could not return?If equal affection cannot be,Let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I think I amOf stars that do not give a damn,I cannot, now I see them, sayI missed one terribly all day.

Were all stars to disappear or die,I should learn to look at an empty skyAnd feel its total dark sublime,Though this might take me a little time.

If this season is an empty sky...I'm trying to feel its total dark sublime.

____________________________________*Title a quote from commenter Jack Marshall over at Joy of Sox.

**Portions of this post have been cut-and-pasted from comments I made on other sites recently. Please don't be the blowhard that points this out; those comments all went into the thought process for this post.

P.S. Some posts I have agreed with and been glad for of late, considering all of the above:

This is probably the most rational thing I've read on the web today. Very well said, Beth, and what a relief to see.

I've spent a lot of time defending various players to various people, and it seems like there's always that one new guy that winds up as my "project" every year. Last year, it was Edgar Renteria. (Boy can I pick 'em.) This year it's Josh Beckett, and man has that felt like sheer futility most of the time. It's astounding to me how much venom there is around the Sox, both from the media talking heads and the so-called "smartest fans in baseball" even after the end of an 86-year championship drought. There's no patience at all with newcomers or (recently) rookies when they struggle, and that's terrible.

I'm not a sheep when it comes to Theo--I've regularly questioned his bullpen construction, and I've outright hated some of his trade moves (the Josh Bard one most recently). But after reading "Feeding the Monster," I got a good sense of how the FO works and what Theo's MO is, so I give him the benefit of the doubt most of the time. There's a lot of good young talent on this club, but those guys aren't all going to hit their stride right away. I think all fans could learn to be a little more patient before closing the book on any one player...or any one season.

I completely agree with what you said here I'm a little tired of having to defend good players because things have gone wrong. I'm sick of having to try and tell people that there isn't really anyone person to blame not to mention no one actually listens to me
great post Beth

VERY WELL SAID!! I like to remind myself and you on occasion that sports, professional and college, is entertainment that I happen to enjoy. I like watching and talking about the "local entry" in the MLB or NFL. These players have extraordinary skill. They all work at their craft and have the drive or ego to not fail. However, when you get to the professional level everyone has the skill, which makes it difficult to perform all of the time. There is a fine line between success and failure at the pro level. I would encourage everyone to enjoy the moment with these extraordinary folks we happen to have playing in our "local entries". We could after all be watching and supporting the local entries in Tampa or KC.

Well said, Beth! Like you, I also retooled my perspective on this season after reading the Mnookin book. I think it's human nature to look for the fall guy in any bad situation but that tendency gets amplified when combined with the passion of your average Boston fan. I agree with your point on the media's role in this. I still listen to 'EEI but in much shorter doses & with much more of an objective ear. Subsequently, I am more & more appalled at the things I hear. Ditto the print media. With rare exceptions (Bob Ryan most notably), both seem to revel in dancing the fine line between fact & character assassination.

The most heinous aspect of this is that the media is fully aware of the almost parasitic symbiosis that exists among team, fan, and themselves - which can only lead me to conclude that they engage in this with full (and cynical) deliberation.

I can certainly understand the blogger avoiding the Globe and WEEI, and also her apt "pack-a-day" analogy. Any intelligent observer of "the sporting press" knows that its purpose is to arouse reaction, not to facilitate reasoned discourse on the topics it covers. What I can't understand is how she leaps from personal avoidance of the media, to placing the blame of Fiasco '06 squarely on the players.
--------------------------------------------------
"when you lose by an average of 10 runs for three straight games, it's beyond being caused by managerial moves. It's also beyond being caused by the GM not making an eyewash trade at the deadline. Which is not to say that the manager / GM haven't been a factor--but this past weekend, it's safe to say that the players themselves are simply falling down on the job."
---------------------------------------------------
Certainly some players are deserving of criticism, but should Theo be exonerated? Given that injuries to the pitching staff (specifically to Schilling and Foulke) was the root cause of the failure to win the division or a playoff game last year, this statement seems naive;
--------------------------
It would be nice given the injuries to our starting rotation to have him in there, but unless you can show me that on the day of the trade you anticipated what would happen to our rotation, nobody's psychic.
------------------------------
Not anticipating SOME injuries to the pitching staff, and having no contingency plan is just ignoring (recent) past history. As for Bronson Arroyo "being what he is" (whatever that means)...he is a Cincinnati Red who has pitched 189.1 innings as of 8/28. That number would lead the Sox staff in that category. Think those innings could help preserve a beleaguered pen? And, I'm glad that "Wily Mo is getting better" but I don't see how she can say he's going to replace Manny's bat. I'm no psychic but, Manny is one of the best righthanded hitters in baseball history. Can any reasonable person predict they'll someday say the same about Pena?

Beyond the total failure of Coco Crisp, other glaring weaknesses bringing the club down; no 5th starter, no lefty specialist in the pen, no number 5 hitter, no backup outfielder.

David and Manny have done all that any fan could expect. Kevin Youkilis has been a nice player, Mike Lowell's provided more production than anyone could have expected. That's enough to get you 85 wins, if you're lucky enough to play some of the weakest teams in the National League. I think it's fair to say that Theo had some hand in shaping this club. His failure to address its problems when they became painfully evident -- either at the deadline, before or after -- only worsened the situation. We can all acknowledge his failures without name-calling WEEI-style.

you are certainly entitled to your opinion, though for the most part i still wonder where the line is between theo "failing" and "failing to be psychic." also, i don't recall suggesting that theo is not open to any criticism--this post was mostly about the tone and, in my opinion, hysterical nature of the way that criticism is being voiced.

anyway, i feel the need to point out that what i actually said was:

Take this latest Yankees series. In my opinion, when you lose by an average of 10 runs for three straight games, it's beyond being caused by managerial moves. It's also beyond being caused by the GM not making an eyewash trade at the deadline. Which is not to say that the manager / GM haven't been a factor...
[...]
through a combination of many, many factors, few of which are under anyone's control in any way whatsoever, this season has not turned out the way we wanted it to so far.

i still stand by the idea that there are a number of factors at work here, one of which has been theo--you make a good case in your arguments, we don't need to rehash them any further. however, what i see is people finding one argument--theo, francona, the bullpen, manny--and heaping all the blame on that one person. and the arguments are neverending, because all of these people are right. because to me, it's all of the above. but people insist on having one person, one goat, one Grady-Little-like figure we can ride out of town on a rail, and that's what i think isn't right.

Last season injuries to Schilling and Foulke likely prevented the team winning the division. It doesn't take a pschic to guard against a similar scenario, a prudent baseball man will do. Depth is an important consideration.

oh, i'm not thinking in terms of consequences or solutions, so much as trying to figure out what went wrong. in any event, i certainly don't think he should be fired. however, a climb down off his lofty pedestal couldn't hurt him any. he gets a lot of credit as the engineer of the championship club. and, while some of that praise is deserved, it must be remembered that he inherited quite a few key players; Varitek, Manny, Damon, Nixon, Mirabelli, Nomar, Pedro, Lowe, Wakefield. i would hope that he's able to look critically at his failures as well as successes. without belaboring the point, i'd say he's had a fair number of both.
what do you think?

as for what i think, from my point of view, what is actually happening here is: right now, as of today, it looks like the red sox will probably not make the playoffs for an unprecedented fourth year in a row--although even that is not fact yet. this after they made the playoffs for the first time in five years and made it five outs away from the pennant; followed that by making the playoffs for a second consecutive year for the first time since 1916, became the first team ever to force a seventh game in a seven-game series after being down 0-3, became the first team ever to win that seventh game, became the first team to win eight straight postseason games, and then won the first championship in eighty-six years; and then followed THAT by making the playoffs for an unprecedented third year in a row.

basically, i think that to ascribe the word "failure" to all that is unreasonable.

I muddled through the errors in syntax and found what I believe to be your point; The Sox, with the 2nd highest payroll in baseball, aren't going to the playoffs, yet Theo didn't fail. WOW! And some say he has TOUGH job!

Statcounter C2F

Copyright

WHAT THIS MEANS:
It means you can quote me or reproduce parts of my posts--the sharing of ideas are what the blogosphere is all about.
But it means YOU MUST ATTRIBUTE THE SOURCE. Say where you got the quote from. Say whose idea it was. Say who found the information. Give credit where credit is due.
Do NOT reproduce any of my posts as a whole. Do NOT reproduce any of my content for commercial gain. ESPECIALLY DO NOT PASS MY WORK OFF AS YOUR OWN. Plagiarists will be found, humiliated, and, where appropriate, prosecuted.
ALL CONTENT UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED IS SOLE PROPERTY OF THE SITE AUTHOR AND PROTECTED UNDER COPYRIGHT.

CONTACT

I'm happy to talk with you about exchanging links or advertising on this blog, but please don't use my site's comments section to explicitly promote your site or your business without getting in touch with me first.